SQL Server Magazine

Beer, Salt and a Tip for Life

Itzik shares a tip that he got from a waitress that makes beer drinking a better experience.

Temporal Histograms

Handling distribution of events over time is tricky. Break the problem into steps. If handling all of a task’s requirements at once is too complicated, relax some requirements, solve a simpler form of the problem, then reintroduce the complexity layers.

The Logical Puzzle

Get the solution to April’s puzzle, “Suicidal Mosquito,” and prepare your mind for May’s puzzle, which involves distance calculation.

Changes to MERGE and HIERARCHYID

Itzik describes changes to the MERGE statement and the HIERARCHYID datatype that will appear after CTP 6.

Set Operations

Circumvent unsupported logical phases, work around SQL Server 2005’s lack of INTERSECT ALL and EXCEPT ALL, and take advantage of the INTERSECT and EXCEPT operations’ treatment of NULLs.

The Logical Puzzle

Get the solution to March’s puzzle “Too Clever by Half,” and prepare your mind for April’s puzzle, which involves calculating distance.

Set Operations

Unique Constraint with Multiple NULLs

Itzik describes how you can enforce a unique constraint with multiple NULLs in Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Tip for SQL Server Management Studio

Itzik provides a tip regarding highlighting code in SQL Server Management Studio.

MERGE

SQL Server 2008’s MERGE statement simplifies the task of merging source data into a target table.

The Logical Puzzle

Get the solution to February’s puzzle “Counterfeit Coins,” and prepare your mind for March’s puzzle.

Beyond MERGE’s Basics

Delve further into the MERGE statement, including its more advanced aspects and its restrictions.

Conversions between Character and Binary Values in Katmai

Itzik describes an enhancement to the CONVERT function in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 which allows new types of conversions between character strings and binary values.

The Logical Puzzle

MERGE

Beyond MERGE’s Basics

GO n

Itzik describes an undocumented feature of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 client tools.

Solutions for T-SQL Challenge - Combinations

Itzik provides the solutions for the T-SQL challenge – Combinations from last week.

The Logical Puzzle

Get the solution to January’s puzzle “Counting Triangles,” and prepare your mind for February’s puzzle, which involves determining weights.

SQL Server Read-Consistency Problems, Part 3

Under both Read Uncommitted and Read Committed isolations, updates running during an index-order scan can result in reading the same row multiple times or skipping rows.